The 1992–93 NHL season was the 76th regular season of the National Hockey League. Each player wore a patch on their jersey throughout the 1992–93 regular season and playoffs to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the Stanley Cup. It proved, at the time, to be the highest-scoring regular season in NHL history, as a total of 7,311 goals were scored over 1,008 games for an average of 7.25 per game.[1] Twenty of the twenty-four teams scored three goals or more per game, and only two teams, the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Chicago Blackhawks, allowed fewer than three goals per game. Only 68 shutouts were recorded during the regular season.[2] Twenty-one players reached the 100-point plateau and fourteen reached the 50-goal plateau.[3] The Montreal Canadiens won their league-leading 24th Cup by defeating the Los Angeles Kings four games to one. As of 2015[update], this is the last time that a Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup.

Commemorative patch celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Stanley Cup

This was the final season of the Wales and Campbell Conferences, and the Adams, Patrick, Norris, and Smythe divisions. Both the conferences and the divisions would be renamed to reflect geography rather than the league's history for the following season. This was also the last year (until the 2013 realignment) in which the playoff structure bracketed and seeded teams by division; they would be bracketed and seeded by conference (as in the NBA) for 1993–94.

Teemu Selanne of the Winnipeg Jets shattered the rookie scoring record by scoring 76 goals and 56 assists for 132 points this season. He was named the winner of the Calder Memorial Trophy as the NHL Rookie of the Year, and his goals and points marks remain the NHL rookie records as of 2015[update].

The New York Rangers missed the playoffs. This marked the first time since the President's Trophy had been introduced that the previous season's top team missed the next year's playoffs.

For the first time in his NHL career, Wayne Gretzky did not finish in the top three in scoring. A back injury limited Gretzky to 45 games in which he scored 65 points.

The Ottawa Senators and Tampa Bay Lightning were two new teams to be added to the league, bringing the league to 24 teams. Both teams would win their opening games and briefly sit atop their respective Divisions, which led to Harry Neale jokingly proclaiming before the end of Ottawa's first win that both the Senators and Lightning would reach the Stanley Cup finals in May.

The 1993 Stanley Cup playoffs marked the 100th anniversary of the Stanley Cup.

As a part of the strike settlement, the NHL and Bruce McNall's Multivision Marketing and Public Relations Co. organized 24 regular season games in cities without a franchise. These games were seen as a litmus test for future expansion, and several of the cities chosen—Phoenix, Atlanta, Dallas and Miami—were eventually indeed the sites of expansion or relocations. February 8, 1993 was the first NHL game to be played at The Omni since 1980 when the Calgary Flames played in that building in Atlanta. That city would get another NHL team in 1999, and lose it to Winnipeg after just 12 seasons. The 22 of that same month marked the first game played in Cleveland's Richfield Coliseum, the former home of the Barons, since 1978 before they folded. Ohio got a team in 2000 with the Columbus Blue Jackets.